"The superior man is catholic and no partizan. The mean man is a partizan and not catholic." (君子周而不比、小人比而不周。) ─ Confucius, The Analects, 2.XIV, translation by James Legge.

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Christine O'Donnell, Constitutional Scholar

"Where in the Constitution is separation of church and state?" she asked, "drawing swift criticism from her opponent, laughter from her law school audience" — O'Donnell questions separation of church, state. "The First Amendment establishes a separation," responded her opponent, to which she interrupted, "The First Amendment does? ... So you're telling me that the separation of church and state, the phrase 'separation of church and state,' is in the First Amendment?"

How stupid! No, not Mrs. O'Donnell, but her ignorant opponent, her equally ignorant "law school audience," and the deceitful Washington Post for publishing this crap.

This changed with the questionable reading of the questionably worded Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which mandated that "[n]o State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws" and that "Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article."

Indeed, the history of Anglo-Saxon constitutionalism can be said to begin with the first clause of Magna Carta, which guaranteed "that the English Church shall be free, and shall have its rights undiminished, and its liberties unimpaired."